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Jo Riccioni is a writer based in Sydney, Australia. She is the author of numerous features and short stories, and her novel, The Italians at Cleat’s Corner Store, is published by Scribe in Australia and the UK. The Italians won the fiction category of the International Rubery Book Award in 2015 and was long-listed for the New Angle Prize in the UK.

‘This may be Jo Riccioni’s debut but it has all the hallmarks of an accomplished and assured novelist … While the narrative has us captivated, the prose itself is a sheer joy. Characters are vivid, similes and metaphors are nailed with ease. Themes emerge quietly and then flower to illuminate the sense of the book … [A] romantic and enthralling story.’
— DIANNE DEMPSEY The Age/Sydney Morning Herald

‘A polished and absorbing debut from a new talent in Australian fiction’
— CATE KENNEDY, author of The World Beneath.

‘Assured from the first page and beautifully written with a light touch, Riccioni's engaging novel pits free spirits against the confines of a postwar English village'
— PADDY O'REILLY, author of The Fine Colour of Rust.

'Riccioni works in what might be called heartfelt slow-motion, not rushing her narrative, exploring her characters sensitively but meticulously ... She is a careful, rather graceful accumulator.'
—MARK THOMAS, The Age/Sydney Morning Herald

'A rich debut novel. Riccioni weaves together romance and tragedy, and captures a vivid sense of history and place, in a story that is at once expansive and personal.'
— PORTIA LINDSAY, Books + Publishing (4 stars)